


making up memories

by theappleppielifestyle



Series: Avengers at Hogwarts and Other Misadventures [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, patronus!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:12:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve offers to help Tony produce a Patronus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	making up memories

**Author's Note:**

> This is set about four months before the first fic of this series, where the Avengers, minus Bruce, turn into Animagi.

Sometimes, Tony Stark regrets asking the Sorting Hat to place him in Ravenclaw instead of Slytherin. He knows his father would have a fit if he ended up in Slytherin, even though most of the Starks end up there. But no, not Howard’s son; Tony would be in Ravenclaw, because _wit beyond measure is man’s greatest fucking treasure, fuckedy fuck fucking shit._

Tony has no doubt in his mind that the Sorting Hat had had the same conversation with dear old Dad about whether he should be in Slytherin or Ravenclaw, and that Howard only ended up in Ravenclaw because he begged like Tony did.

Not that being in Ravenclaw isn’t awesome- Tony loves it, loves the atmosphere and loves that he gets to room with Bruce, loves how stimulating being in Ravenclaw is. Loves the work and their house morals, the constant rotation of the stars rotating around the domed ceiling of the common room.

Tony loves being in Ravenclaw, even if there are times when answering a riddle to get into the common room and hence into bed is annoying. Like if he has forgotten to sleep for the past 40 hours and he’s been drinking too much spell-induced coffee and the stupid portrait gets snippy after he makes her repeat the riddle for the fifth time.

Being in Slytherin would have been different, he knows. For one, he’d be having all his classes with Natasha. He’d also have a blind eye turned on him, if not get praised, for maybe possibly sort of manipulating Steve into sneaking out of school with him to Hogsmeade, whereas in Ravenclaw, he gets Bruce’s exasperated look and a sigh.

No-one is entirely one house, Tony knows. Everyone knows that. People have different qualities from each house, and whatever ones are the most predominant get you sorted into the right house, and if you happen to fall directly in between, the Hat asks you to decide.

Tony was pretty much fifty-fifty, the Hat had said when he pulled it on. Had said it was Tony’s choice, Tony’s decision to make. And at age eleven, with his father’s legacy weighing heavy on him, Tony had only hesitated for a second before asking for Ravenclaw.

When Tony pulls stuff that might fall onto the bad side of shifty, he always thinks back to the weirdly cool interior of the Sorting Hat, and how everything would be different if he had asked to be put into Slytherin, instead.

For one, he knows he have a better chance at being left alone when he’s in a bad mood, instead of getting asked repeatedly if he’s okay. Slytherins have a reputation for getting revenge if people piss them off, and then having it never link back to them even though everyone knows they did it.

Re: Natasha. Since the incident with Sam Wilson in their first year, no-one’s done anything to get on Natasha’s bad side unless they were looking for trouble. Or it was a bet- around about third year, Natasha started getting approached by first years who had been dared by their peers to go up and irritate her.

Tony wishes people would be that scared of him, sometimes. At least then they’d leave him the hell alone when he obviously doesn’t want to talk about it.

“I’m fine,” Tony says, loud enough that a pair of Hufflepuffs look over from the next table. “God, stop asking.”

Clint shrugs, and starts digging into his eggs. Tony wrinkles his nose. Clint always eats like the plate’s going to be taken away from him and he needs to eat everything he can before that happens.

In the seat next to him, Steve, who is more desensitized than Tony to Clint’s eating habits, continues eating his toast like he isn’t watching this disgusting display. “If you’re sure,” he says.

“Good. I’m sure.”

“We can tell,” Steve says through a mouthful of toast. “You’re totally fine.”

“I am!”

“Yeah, we believe you.”

“Stop it.”

Steve gives him the innocent baby blues. “Stop what,” he says, and several crumbs stick to the edge of his bottom lip. Steve’s tongue flicks out to swipe them away, and Tony definitely doesn’t watch that.

“Nervous,” Steve asks after a while, and Tony startles out of a daydream that may or may not involve Steve licking something other than breadcrumbs off his lips.

It takes Tony a second for it to click, and then he scoffs. “What? No. I’m not _nervous_. I’m-”

“Anxious?”

Natasha butts in: “Worried?”

“Pee your pants terrified,” Clint supplies helpfully, and Tony kicks him under the table.

“I. Am. Fine,” Tony says,  half-snarling it. “FINE. I’m not worried about class today.” He picks up his fork and shoves it into his eggs, stabbing them repeatedly instead of eating them.

Bruce watches the worrying display. “Tony, it’s fine to be nervous. I’m nervous as hell.”

Tony’s brutal massacre of his eggs pauses. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Bruce nods. “I mean, I know I’m not going to be able to produce even a semi-corporal Patronus. I’m fine with failing that class, I can afford it.”

“Mm.” Tony’s egg-stabbing resumes. “Everyone meet back here after?”

He gets murmurs of agreement from everyone, and Tony decides that if he’s going to fail this, he might as well do it on a full stomach. The next stab of eggs turns into a forkful that goes into his mouth.

 

 

 

Tony has History of Magic first, but even when Coulson starts describing the giant war in surprisingly graphic detail, Tony can’t concentrate. He’s too busy trying to figure out if he even HAS any memories that are happy enough to produce a Patronus. The instructor at the briefing last week had explained that the memory had to ‘take you over’ and ‘fill you up.’ Which is bullshit, in Tony’s opinion. Who has a memory like that, at their age?

Bruce sure as hell doesn’t, from what Tony’s learned about his family life. At least he and Tony can be together in their failing of this stupid class.

Break isn’t much better, and Tony glares at his pumpkin juice and wracks his brain.

“What the fuck is your happiest memory,” he bursts out finally, and Clint stops with a spoonful of cereal- cereal, for lunch, what the fuck- halfway to his mouth.

Tony watches with narrowed eyes as Clint stuffs the spoon into his mouth after a second of hesitation, chews, swallows, and says, “Fucked if I know. Even if I think of one, I don’t think it’s Patronus-worthy. The class is bullcrap.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Tony hisses. He’s about to say something else, but he stops when he catches sight of the Gryffindors coming into the Great Hall. He waits until they’re sitting down before asking how it went, trying to sound as bitchy as possible and wishing for a green tie instead of his dark blue.

“It was our first try,” Steve says, spooning heapings of mashed potato onto his plate. “No-one is actually expected to produce a Patronus on the first try.”

“But,” Tony prompts.

“I got this… blue wisp thing,” Steve admits after a moment. “It was there for about a second. The instructor said it was a pretty good attempt.”

“I, too, produced a blue wisp,” Thor says eagerly, beaming like an asshole.

“His nearly took on a form,” Steve says, pointing his fork in Thor’s direction. “Best in the class.”

Thor’s grin nearly splits his face. Apart from Quidditch, where he soars around the field and has everyone chant his name as Steve gets red-faced screaming at him to get back to the other beater, Thor isn’t used to being best at anything.

He’s still smiling when Natasha comes up, arching her eyebrow at a pair of first-year Ravenclaws who are frowning at them because they aren’t used to the fact that their group sits at whatever House table they want. Usually they pick the Gryffindor table, since it’s angled to get the most sunlight, but today they’re at Ravenclaw.

Clint is busy stuffing his face when he says, “Not good, huh.” But his mouth is full, so it comes out as a muffled smear of words and a spray of cereal.

“No,” she answers, eyes lowered at her food as she begins picking through it. “But it was the first try. How was Gryffindor’s class?”

“Mostly uneventful,” Steve answers. “I got a wisp thing, and Thor got pretty close to an actual shape. And we don’t know how she did it, but Peggy set fire to her foot halfway through class.”

 

 

 

 

Finally, after encountering Clint as the Ravenclaws passed the Hufflepuffs- “I SUCKED,” Clint yells from the staircase, “IT WAS PATHETIC AND I AM ASHAMED TO CALL MYSELF A WIZARD. GOOD LUCK.”- Tony has Defence Against the Dark Arts, and the instructor is standing at the front of the class when he gets there, hands folded neatly in front of him.

The instructor waits silently as everyone gets seated, before shaking his sleeves down his arms. “Let’s start,” he says, and so begins the most humiliating hour of Tony’s life.

It’s not that Tony isn’t bad at things. He’s awful at remembering birthdays. He can’t cook to save his life. But magic, he’s good at. He’s always been good at magic, always excelled and studied hard even with all his goofing around. He’s GOOD at magic, even with all the accidents that occur whenever Tony tries to combine magic and technology, resulting in multiple interesting-coloured explosions over the years.

Bruce doesn’t do much better than him. Halfway through, red in the face with effort, Tony thinks he sees something blue-ish at the tip of Bruce’s wand, but it’s gone in a second and Tony chalks it down to a trick of the light.

Tony, however, doesn’t even get a trick of the light. He summons up every happy memory he can think of- getting his wand, his first broom ride, finding a home in this stupid place with people he actually likes, cheering for his friends in the Quidditch stands, that one holiday where Steve’s mom invited him back to their place for Christmas, his first successful experiment that glowed for three days straight- he chants _expecto patronum_ so many times and clenches his jaw so hard it starts to hurt, and he concentrates and says the words but nothing happens.

At the end of the lesson, the instructor tells them they’ve all had a very good first attempt, and to not be disappointed if they achieved less than they thought they would. “Most wizards take weeks, if not months, to produce a fully corporal Patronus,” he tells them.

The only thing Tony has ever spent months failing at is playing a prank on Clint, which turned out successful after two and a half months of trying it and resulted in Clint walking around with yellow skin for a week.

 

 

After the second lesson and Tony still hasn’t made any progress even though Justin Hammer managed to produce a flash of blue, Tony heads out to the Forbidden Forest.

Ever since second year, when they had started learning about centaurs in History of Magic, Tony and the others had taken to hanging out in the Forest. It’s usually fine if its daylight and they stay out of centaur territory, avoid the half-giants and stay away from those weird fairy things that shoot fire from their mouths if you piss them off.

Tony sidesteps a sentient log that always tries to strike up a conversation when he walks past, and makes it to the place he usually hangs out with his friends in the Forest: a long, flat rock that juts out over the ground and is perfect for perching on. Tony climbs on, dangles his legs over the side, and takes his wand out of his pocket.

“Expecto patronum,” he mutters, executing the wand motions perfectly if not a little too quickly, and then repeating the words and the motion. His eyes squeeze shut, mouthing the words with gritted teeth and trying to hold onto a memory.

What he’s been trying lately is the reason why he’s here. The happiest memory he can think of is one of sitting right here, legs dangling off the side of the rock. He can’t remember exactly when it was, even what year it was in except for a toss-up between three and four, but he remembers the feeling swelling inside him as his friends all lazed around in the sun that filtered through the trees. Remembers the hazy happiness that filled his chest fit to bursting, tight around his ribs and squeezing his lungs.

That, he thinks, is the feeling he’s supposed to be looking for, so Tony thinks it’s worth a shot, coming back to the place it happened and trying to re-create it by himself through memory.

“Expecto patronum,” Tony says, watching his wand intently and opening his mouth to say it again when he hears leaves crunching behind him. He startles, and his wand turns with his head in case it’s some other godawful magical creature that will ask him riddles three, or something.

Instead he gets Steve, hands pocketed and tie half undone, showing off his collarbones as he walks towards Tony. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Tony replies, and shuffles over to make room for Steve on the rock.

Steve climbs on, letting his legs hang over the edge of the rock the same way Tony is doing. “I saw you head this way. You trying to clear your head?”

“Trying to make a patronus,” Tony says, and can’t keep the frustration from bleeding into his voice. He flicks his wand, too vicious for spellwork, and grits, “It’s impossible. How the hell do you do it?”

“It’s easy when you get the hang of it.”

Tony fixes him with a glare, and Steve’s laugh is apologetic. “Sorry.” He pauses, his lips parting for a moment before saying, “Do you want some help?”

Tony rebukes all help. Tony laughs in the face of help, he spits in it, he kicks help in the face, marches off and does everything by himself without help and does it better than anyone else would dare to dream. But he also seems to be incredibly bad at this, so he swallows his pride- some of it, swallowing all of it would cause indigestion problems, Tony’s sure- and says, “Mph.”

Steve, after years of being around this, takes it as an affirmative. “Okay, so what memory are you working with right now?”

“What memory are you working with,” Tony asks instead of replying.

Steve’s smile flickers, and Tony watches as the telltale blush starts working its way up his neck. Before Steve can even open his mouth, Tony crows, “Why, _Steven_ ,” and lowers his gaze so he can look at Steve from under his eyelashes. “I thought you involved us in everything you shouldn’t be doing after lights-out.”

“It’s not that,” Steve scowls.

“Not what,” Tony replies innocently. Or, however innocent he can pull off. Any of Tony’s friends get instantly on guard whenever Tony tries to act innocent.

Steve waves his wand-free hand at Tony. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not that.”

“You sure, big boy?”

“Yes,” Steve says flatly, and Tony watches in amusement as he tries not to comment on ‘big boy.’ “Are you going to let me help you or not?”

“Fine.”

“Okay. What memory?”

“Hey, you first, now I’m curious.”

At first, Tony thinks Steve is going to brush Tony off again, but it only takes a second before Steve is saying slowly, “The memory doesn’t have to be real. It just has to make you feel something big enough to make the spell work.”

“So you think I should make something up?”

Steve shrugs. “If none of your memories have worked so far, then yeah, why not?”

“What’d you make up?”

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

They look at each other, the two stubborn boys they’ve been since that day on the train ride in, both adamant over the fact that they deserve this particular seat. Tony remembers the determined frown on the eleven-year-old’s face, and watches Steve’s face now: larger, broader, and hovering on the edge of speech.

“Lets try it together,” Steve says finally, and at first Tony thinks he means saying it, before Steve raises his wand.

Tony gets it a second later, raising his arm with Steve’s and pointing it in the direction of an oak tree in front of them.

“Just- think of anything,” Steve tells him, and Tony looks in those stupidly blue eyes and tries to conjure up something that makes his chest fill. They’ve moved closer during their conversation so their knees press together, and Tony remembers all the times their knees have knocked when they were sitting and talking with each other.

 _Think of anything_ , Tony repeats, and Steve isn’t looking at him now, is looking straight ahead at his wand, but Tony can still see the blue of his eyes.

Steve says “Expecto _patronum_ ,” with the same force as he had told Tony five years ago to please let him have his seat back, and Tony says it a syllable late, but the feeling widens and then solidifies and then races through his arm to his wand.

Blue bursts from Steve’s wand, and then Tony’s, and they both swirl rapidly for a moment before taking loose forms that get progressively less loose. Blue flows from the animals’ torsos, sloughing off and around as they start to run about on newly-formed legs.

Beside Tony, Steve is smiling, and Tony watches with a grin too big for his face as a golden retriever and a- a something, a lynx or a panther, something long and sleek and catlike- chase flowing circles around the oak tree, skimming close to each other before padding away.

“A cat and a dog,” Steve says, and his voice is getting shaky due to holding in laughter, “Makes no sense. Everyone’s going to be shocked.”

It doesn’t last much longer after that, because they’re laughing too hard to continue- maybe three seconds before their forms start to jumble again, before their features melt together before the form dissolves completely and the blue disappears. Tony turns to Steve, both giggling, shaking slightly from it, and there it is: the blue, the patronus-blue right there in Steve’s eyes.

“No wonder we didn’t get along,” Tony chokes when he can finally get his breath back.

Steve doesn’t answer, just wheezes louder, which makes Tony bursts into shuddering laughter again.

**Author's Note:**

> Steve's memory that induces a Patronus is actually real. It's of a night in third year when Tony had fallen asleep on his shoulder when they were doing their Potions homework together. Bruce had gone to bed, so it was just Steve, the scratch of his quill and the soft sounds of Tony breathing. Steve might have gotten distracted and watched Tony for a while as he tried to figure out what the hell he was feeling.
> 
> That night was when he finally admitted to himself that he was in love with his friend. Eventually this caused a lot of awkward moments and pain, but that first moment was kind of perfect in Steve's eyes.


End file.
